The Ultimate Guide to Backing Up Your WordPress Website & Save It For a Bad Day

You wake up one morning and open your website, only to be greeted by a horrifying ‘Website/Server Down’ message.

That’s okay, you reassure yourself that you’ll be able to restore it to it’s old glory soon.

But then, a horrible realization dawns on you that you can’t remember the last time you took a backup of your website.

Now, it is really time to panic!

Because if you don’t have a recent backup of your website, it most probably means you’ve lost all your data in the server crash.

All those painstaking hours of creating content, designing, developing and generating back links, all gone down the drain.

This nightmare can come true for anyone and everyone.

Which is why, backing up your WordPress website should be a priority for every website owner.

Thanks to the many amazing backup options available today, you can ensure that everything on your website, including the content and databases, are safe, and easily retrievable when need be.

For the sake of all the WordPress novices, let us first explain what exactly “backing up a website” means.

‘Backing Up’ a WordPress website simply means creating an identical or duplicate copy of your original website and saving it in a secure place. This will include everything from it’s theme and plugins, to the entire database.

Now that you know what ‘back up’ means, let’s move on to the different kind of threats that can bring your website down.

#Threats That Can Doom Your Website

Let’s be honest;

There are actually a million things that can go wrong with your website or server, which may cause it’s doom.

Faulty wiring, electrical breakdown and even spilling of coffee on some important machine, can be the cause of a server crash.

However, there are certain causes which are more often than not, responsible for causing a website/server breakdown. Some of these include;

#1. DDoS Attacks : DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. In this kind of attack, perpetrators try to make a website or network unavailable to the users, by interrupting the services of a host connected to the internet. It is generally done through multiple devices and internet connections which may be distributed all over the world (botnet).

#2. Plugin Issues : Plugins, although primarily very advantageous, can sometimes lead to unwanted mishaps if not used properly. When you add too many plugins, it may bog down your website if the server cannot handle that much load. Also, there are certain plugins that may not be compatible with your website. Installing such plugins may hamper the functioning of your website. Therefore, it is always advisable to add one plugin at a time, in order to make it easier to figure out which plugin is the culprit.

#3. Incompetent Host : The security of your website will depend a lot on your host’s proficiency. If your website is getting a lot of traffic and if your host is not competent enough to handle such large amounts of traffic inflow, it may lead to a website crash.

#4. Upgrades : A very unfortunate consequence of a server or CMS upgrade gone wrong is, data loss. Often times, your server host may upgrade without giving any prior warning, which may lead to the loss of precious data and content from your website.

#5. Hacking/Malicious Activity : The internet is dark and full of malicious threats! If your website grabs the attention of some malevolent hackers, they may compromise your website’s security by stealing your bandwidth for their own menacing purposes, thereby causing your website to crash.

So these are just few threats that can cause a website or server breakdown.

In any case, having a backup of your website will solve 80% of your problems, as you will be able to restore your website just like it was before, without worrying about losing any important data.

Now that we’ve given you an idea about why you should backup your WordPress website, let’s move on to the important things that need to be backed up.

#Vital Things to Backup from Your WordPress Website

There are normally two things which need to be backed up from a WordPress website;

Database

Files

The ‘Files’ here would include;

WordPress Core Installation

WordPress Plugins

WordPress Themes

Images & Files

Javascripts, PHP Scripts & Other Code Files

Static Web Pages

If you take regular backups of all these files and the database of your WordPress website, you will never have to lose sleep over a website crash and subsequent data loss, regardless of whether your server has a backup or not.

Now, moving on to the most crucial part;

What are the ways in which you can create backups of your WordPress website?

Basically, there are two ways in which you can backup your website; Manually or setting it up Automatically.

Let’s begin with the manual methods first.

#Manual Backups

One of the biggest advantages of using WordPress is that, it comes with loads of amazing features that make running a website a simple and smooth affair.

These features also include backup options.

If you wish to manually backup your website so that you have a copy if and when your host or server fails to retrieve one for you, then these are the ways to do it;

#1. Backup Directly Via WordPress Tools

If you wish to export your website content (not themes, plugins or other crucial files) from your existing website, you can easily do so through the admin panel of your WordPress. All you need to do is;

A] Go to the Dashboard of your admin panel.

B] Click on the Tools icon and expand it.

C] Click on the Export button and tick All Content under Choose What to Export.

D] Click on the Download Export File button and save your files.

#2. PHPMyAdmin for Database

This is one of the simplest ways of creating a backup of your database. The steps involved are as follows;

A] Go to your host server and log into PHPMyAdmin.

B] Select the database that carries your WordPress data, i.e. the one that was created when you installed WordPress.

C] On the top set of tabs, you will see a “Export” button. Click on that.

D] This section will display all the tables in your database. Select all those which correspond to your WordPress install.

G] Click on ‘Go’ and save the file. Make sure you save the file in the zip or gzipp format, so that your files are compressed and downloaded. This will make it easier to manage them.

You will now have a backup of your database on your computer.

#3. cPanel

If your host uses cPanel, then you can easily backup your database and files using this powerful control panel. To generate a full backup in the cPanel, you will need to follow the steps mentioned below;

A] Go to your web host and log into your cPanel account.

B] Go to the Files section and click on Backup Wizard. This is where your WordPress website (one or many) is backed up on the server.

C] Under the Backup Wizard section, click on the Backup icon.

D] Here you will see a Home Directory icon. This will have all your files, themes content and comments. Click on this icon.

E] Once you click on the Home Directory button, you will be able to download and save your files on your computer. Make sure you save it in a zip or gzip format to make the process easier.

In case of your website files, here is another way, apart from using cPanel, in which you can create their backup.

#4. FTP Client (Filezilla)

This process will require you to have an FTP account and Filezilla software installed on your system. It is highly advisable to have an FTP account, especially if you don’t have access to cPanel on your host, as it will allow you to move and copy files from your computer to your hosting account, and vice versa.

B] Use the connect feature to access your ftp account. To access that, you will require your domain name url, username, password and port number.

C] In lower right corner, highlight all the files and folders by selecting any folder and clicking Ctlr-a.

D] From there, select the public_html directory.

E] Finally, right click on the highlighted files and folders and select download. All your files will be saved in the ‘Website Backup’ folder.

However, if you find the process of manual backup too tedious or time-consuming, let us tell you, there are several amazing tools and plugins which can automatically create a backup of your required data. Read on for more on that.

If you wish to install this plugin, head to UpdraftPlus.com and get step wise instructions on installing it on your WordPress website.

These were just some of the plugins which can be utilized to create regular backups of your website. If you are looking for other resources for Cloud Backup (Online backup), we have some suggestions for those too!

#5. DropMySite

Just like its name suggests, this is the place where you can drop your site!

In other words, this is a place where you can create a backup of your WordPress website, save it every time, and retrieve it when required.

#Conclusion

It includes a lot of hard work and monitoring to keep it functioning to it’s best capacity.

Which is why, losing a website or its data is the worst thing that can happen to anyone who owns a website, as it nullifies all the efforts that were put into building it.

Taking regular backups of your website can easily prevent such a situation from happening and hence, it needs to be put as a high priority task during the development process.

If you are starting a website or looking for suitable ways to create a backup for an already existing one, then this guide should help you in creating and saving your backups in secure places, in more ways than one.

You can choose the one which best suits your needs and run your website without ever worrying about server crashes or data loss.

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